Fable III

[Dante]

 

Teaser Trailer

 

Preview:

Picture it: the land of Albion in the age of steam. Through the cobbled streets of its towns, crooked houses with slated roofs compete for the afternoon sun with angry eruptions of unlikely machinery, valves match steeples for control of the skyline, and oily goop drips into babbling brooks that run beside fields of already queasy sunflowers.

 

"You'll see new marvels of the industrial age, devices that the people of Albion are amazed by," enthuses art lead John McCormack. "Half of Bowerstone will be turned into this mass of pistons and steam and clockwork - everything's moving." You'll have to picture it for yourself at the moment, because these are early days for Fable III (a game which, even if it's a disaster, will probably go down in history as the best title ever accidentally announced on Twitter, by Jonathan Ross). Prototypes are up and running deep inside Lionhead's offices, but none of it's ready for the likes of us just yet, unless you're willing to move to Guildford, fake a CV and wing a job as an advanced AI programmer.

 

A recent chance to sit down with the designers and learn about the early stages of the game's development revealed no hints of Natal, no suggestions if the Milo experiments are bleeding in, no news on what's become of your dog or your trail of breadcrumbs, and no crazy schemes for online modes. The team is willing to give us a tantalising taste of what it is they want to do, but nobody's ready to reveal exactly how it's going to be done.

 

Instead, there are stories. Stories like this: Several months ago, no matter how many exactly, as Fable II was chugging nicely towards release, a small group gathered in a meeting room at Lionhead. They had come to decide what Fable III would be - and what it wouldn't be. It's a special moment for any game, but particularly poignant for this one: a series that hangs upon choices was having its own mechanics enacted in real life. Perhaps Peter Molyneux even kicked a chicken a good distance at some point during the discussion.

 

"We started to think about Fable III halfway through Fable II," says McCormack. "You're always thinking about the future, and because of the speed of the industry, you're trying to pre-empt any lag. You get to the end of a game, and hopefully you know what you're doing next already. It's really unfocused at this stage, though, because you don't want to tie yourself down too early. So what we do is we present Peter and the designers with a range of art, a range of things that Fable III could be - all the settings and eras and styles it could be. Anything that tickles your fancy. You put together what you think is a logical progression, but also what you think is a crazy progression, and let the designers and artists work together to choose the best one."

 

And what they chose, once again, is something of a mish-mash. "The entire Fable idea is a fairytale twist on European history and myth," says McCormack. "What we've settled on is to go about 50 years on from Fable II. So we've loosely chosen the Napoleonic period, and we've started to pull in a bit of Regency, a tiny bit of Victorian, and we're plugging in an early industrial age to Albion. It's a Napoleonic fairytale."

 

Ships and cannons and troops, metal and rivets and chattering pipework: Fable II was already a game built from details - anyone who ever stopped to watch the hot blast of animation thrown out whenever one of Albion's humble clockwork doors got ready to open will know that - and this tentatively mechanised environment is a proposition that sounds entirely fitting, even if it promises to significantly alter the familiar environments. "There's still a consistency," offers McCormack. "We never want to be photorealistic. The art style is: never put in straight lines, never use a right-angle, always break shades into opposing colours. There's rules within the art that hopefully turn it into a fairytale no matter where we go. I think we solidified the style with Fable II; with Fable III, we've nailed it.

 

"We've moved it forward. Think of the monsters: industrialisation has pushed the fairytale creatures underground, and to the edges of the forests. You'll go there, and they're still around, but they're not happy about it this time. Albion's still full of mystery and wonder, but it's more aggressive: the ancient creatures don't like to be shoved away."

 

The shift in period is not just an aesthetic choice, then: the landscape is telling a story, and the story itself is typically rooted in the series' fascinations with choices and morality. "There's some mad stuff coming in," laughs McCormack, unwittingly sketching designs in the air with his hand. "One of the main themes here is how the advancement of the new world is having an adverse effect on the beautiful lush environments of Albion. Industrialisation is changing Albion, and do you want to put a stop to that?"

 

Don't expect an easy decision, though: Lionhead isn't pretending that the wonders and horrors of the modern era aren't knotted tightly together. "We're interested in how industry can destroy nature, but also how it can create ships and balloons and cable-cars that take you farther afield and to other lands. It's about colonisation and travel as well. You're expanding the world by introducing industrialisation, but there's always that darker side, and that's war. You're producing war machines and militarising the population."

 

War? Sounds nasty. "I'm terrified," says Peter Molyneux, looking tanned, rested, and distinctly unterrified. "The third time out is tricky. This is where it could all go wrong." He leans back in his chair and spreads his arms wide, as if to show us there's nothing up his sleeves. "This is where it could all... go... wrong."

[Daft]

Can't wait to play the same game for the third time.

[Shorty]

Personally I think it's too soon for them to be making another game. If they're already working on it, how much can it really have advanced over the last title, or its expansions? I want them to try and create something far bigger and better next time, but all I can imagine at the moment is a reskinned Fable II with a new story and steam everywhere. They need to take their time!

[Pantsu Man!]

Hopefully Fable 2 was just something please the Fable fans and Fable 3 is something original and much better than 2.

Hopefully.

[Emerald Emblem]

I'll be honest, I haven't played Fable 2 after I completed it the first time, I can't get into it much and if this is just reskinned like we are assuming then I'll be without it.

[That Guy]

Well I loved Fable 2 but never played one. Looking forward to more.

[S.C.G]

So basically this is Fable 2.Steampunk? I think it's too early tbh and I'm just not that hyped... haven't even finished Fable II yet... >.>

[killer kirby]

One thing I hope they can improve is the running.

 

I don't know about you guys, but playing Fable 2, it felt like the main character was walking on air.

[Emerald Emblem]

Yeah, it felt like he was almost floating over the ground.

[Goafer]

I liked Fable 2, but by the time the story got interesting, it finished. Other than that bit where you became an evil guard for a while, the story was pretty dull.

[Dyson]

Not coming out til next year, I'd pen it for a Christmas release next year to be honest. Fable 2 was a great game so I'm hoping 3 expands on that. The whole ruler of Albion thing sounds awesome.

[Bren]

Woop! So theres more info coming out about Fable III, I couldnt get enough of the first two. Just hope moleyneux keeps his promises this time round.

 

New vidoc :

 

http://kotaku.com/5470427/your-first-look-at-fable-iii-in-action

 

Three major shifts in gameplay mechanics will make Fable III the most innovative entry in the popular role-playing game franchise, developer Peter Molyneux told a gathering of journalists today at Microsoft's X10 event.

 

Fable III will present three key changes in play: In-game touching, highly-customized weapon morphing and the challenge of ruling a kingdom. Molyneux demonstrated the game for Kotaku and other reporters at Microsoft's big X10 showcase in San Francisco. The event highlighted the Xbox 360's biggest 2010 games.

 

"You will start out the game as the 18-year old [child] of your Fable II character," Molyneux said. "You'll find that Albion is being ruled by a tyrant. You are going to storm the castle with all of the people who follow you you're going to take him down and then people are going to come to you and say, 'You promised you would eradicate slavery.You promised turn factories into orphanages. You promised to stop childhood labor'.

 

"We are going to make your time as a ruler a little bit tough."

 

Fable III will also include a major overhaul of the on-screen user interface. Molyneux said that he looked at first-person shooters for inspiration, admiring the way they can give information without numbers or graphs.

 

The look of Fable III we were given featured a screen entirely devoid of icons, maps or bars.

 

Fable III won't display experience points, Molyneux said. Instead your experience is shown by the number of followers you have, something dictated by your skill as a hero, a combatant, a ruler and a promise keeper.

 

Forget about a health bar, too. "We made the health bar one pixel and we thought, 'What are we doing man? No one is going to do that. Let's do what shooters do so well and make the world your health bar,'" Molyneux said.

 

Breakthrough One: Touching

 

The importance of context will also play a role in how you interact with the game's other characters as well, Molyneux said. Players will guide Fable III's hero, perhaps with wife, children and, yes, a dog, through the game, using a new context-heavy system that focuses on the player's character grabbing hold of non-player characters to interact with them.

 

The play mechanic is in part inspired by Ico's hand holding, Molyneux said as he pointed to the screen at an image of a young man running through a cobble-stoned street to a house.

 

"I live here with my wife," he said. "We allow you to get married again. You can have children again and a dog. The dog is much more dog-like... make sure your dog never sees a rabbit. The dog in Fable III hates rabbits."

 

The scene on the big screen television then shifts as the character runs through the town, following his dog as he "is scenting" your daughter.

 

Molynuex explains that his in-game wife is worried that their daughter has been kidnapped and has asked him to go get her.

 

In the live presentation, Molynuex's character finds her playing with other children in another part of town.

 

You can still use the directional pad to choose facial expressions to decide how to interact, in this case deciding whether to praise or scold your daughter.

 

"You tell her off and now we can take her home," Molyneux said. "In Fable II you press the A button. In III you use a trigger. When you press the trigger the most appropriate thing happens. This time you comfort her because she is upset. You pull the trigger again and you take her hand and guide her."

 

On the television the hero, holding his young daughter by the hand, gently leads her through the street.

 

"This is using all of our AI because it is highly context-sensitive," he said.

 

On TV, the hero tries to lead his daughter to a pub, but she pulls back, pointing out that her mom, your wife, had asked you to stop going to the pub.

 

"In creating this system I thought, how can I use touch to increase the drama. of a moment, especially if someone pissed me off," he said.

 

That could be done, Molyneux says, by allowing you to grab someone by the scruff of the neck and drag them down into your dungeon and throw them in.

 

Molyneux's character then walks up to a homeless man and takes him by the hand. The man follows, saying that he thinks he's taking him home for a dinner. Then the man stops in his tracks as they turn a corner and a factory looms ahead.

 

"We're going to sell him to the factory," Molyneux says.

 

The man, visibly frightened, begins to pull away, but the character continues to drag him to the factory.

 

The homeless man begins to beg, "Don't sell me to those fiends. You might as well put a bullet in my head."

 

Molyneux says all of the contextual touching will also work in cooperative modes, allowing you to interact with other players in the same way.

 

The co-op will also allow you to separate in game, he said.

 

"You could go off earning money, while I go off to kill people," Molyneux said.

"It's a true co-op experience."

 

Breakthrough Two: Weapon-Morphing

Another major new feature of the game is a tweak to morphing.

 

While a character's look will still morph to suit the gamer's play style, the way it happens has been completely overhauled. The game will also apply morphing to your weapon.

 

"Weapons morph from boring things when you first pick them up to really interesting things depending on the way you use them," he said.

 

The color, texture and what's written on them is controlled by what you kill with them. The size and length, sharpness and curvature is dictated by how often you fight and the duration of those battles. Whether a weapon drips blood or glow depends on if you kill innocent or evil people.

 

Finally, all of that is blended with your actual Gamerscore to create your weapon.

 

"So your weapon is completely unique to you," he said. "You can trade your weapon if you like. There will be thousands of totally unique weapons in the game.

 

On screen, characters fight in caverns, the dungeons of Fable III. One begins to glow, sprou

 

Breakthrough Three: Kingdom-Ruling

 

While the ability to rule kingdom and act on your impulses, for the good or the bad, is an important part of Fable III, it only comes into play about halfway through the game, Molyneux said.

 

And don't worry, he added, it won't make the game a real-time strategy title.

 

"I love the idea of the map in an RTS," he said. "But I don't want the mechanic of an RTS, all I want is its sense of power."

 

One way Fable III does that is by allowing players to pass judgments as law, changing the fabric of the kingdom.

 

"Conventionally, a game is all about a hero's journey," he said. "You start weak and build up your power, take on the bad guy and then the credits roll.

 

"We decided why stop there."

 

Key to the second half of the game is carefully balancing your need to attract followers with promises, and the followers insistence that you keep your promises.

 

"On the journey to becoming king... the temptation is to promise everything," he said. "Then you become king and you realize, 'Oh shit baby, this is not so simple.

 

"Look at Obama. He came into power and promised to shut down Guantanamo Bay. It should have been easy, pick up the phone and close it, but it isn't."ting fiery red wings and horns as he swings a sword into people. Another character sprouts glowing blue wings.

 

Another character hoists an axe straight up in the air above his head, spinning around twice before leveling the axe and tearing into an enemy.

--

 

So after all that, anyone else lookin foward to this? I cant wait

Edited February 12, 2010 by Bren

[Dante]

Woop! So theres more info coming out about Fable III, I couldnt get enough of the first two. Just hope moleyneux keeps his promises this time round.

 

I wont bet on it because it is Molyneux.

 

Breakthrough One: Touching

 

In the first example, the main character — the son of the hero from the last game — was wandering around town looking for his young daughter. When he finds her, the context-sensitive “touch” action (controlled by one of the Xbox 360’s trigger buttons) lets him pick her up and toss her playfully into the air. As they walk home, the “touch” button lets him hold her hand.

 

No HUD:

 

In a video interview earlier this month, Molyneux said players would be “pissed” to hear about one of Fable III’s features. What’s the scoop? There’s no health bar, he said. In fact, there’s no heads-up display elements on the screen at all.

 

“Look at the screen!” Molyneux gushed, gesturing at the monitor like Vanna White. “It’s completely clean! Why do we need the fucking health bar?”

 

Instead of having a bar to show the player’s remaining health, Fable III will take cues from action games, not RPGs, and have environmental graphic changes that show that you’re close to death.

 

What, I asked, about other such menus and gauges?

 

“The 2-D parts of Fable 1 and Fable 2 were rubbish,” he responded. “That’s why people didn’t change their clothes, or change their weapons.” In Fable 3, he said, he’s looking to make that character-customization busywork “part of the game.”

 

Screenshots

[Shorty]

No HUD is not that revolutionary... and what does he mean nobody changed their outfits or weapons in Fable 2?

[Cube]

What Fable 3 really needs is the ability to have "back-up" saves for when you encounter game-destroying bugs (if it does exist in Fable 2, then it's really well hidden).

[LegoMan1031]

Never played the first but loved the second. I'm sure i will love this one as well but i hope they can expand the story and make it longer. I'm sure i will like this but i hope that it isn't to samy to the second.

 

What Fable 3 really needs is the ability to have "back-up" saves for when you encounter game-destroying bugs (if it does exist in Fable 2, then it's really well hidden).

 

I just googled that coz i don't remember encountering any (i must have been lucky or it was patched before i bought it). They do sound rather shit!

[Wesley]

So I've... never played and don't know anything about Fable at all.

 

Is it worth picking up the first on that download service?

[nightwolf]

So I've... never played and don't know anything about Fable at all.

 

Is it worth picking up the first on that download service?

 

The first is a damn good game.

 

Fable 2 is not so good, I like it, but god damn I expect so much more after how long it took to come out.

[Shorty]

Both are incredibly disappointing compared to the way they were originally described before they came out. (See the doodle Dante posted, it's pretty damn accurate).

 

But they're also both good games. Fable will feel very dated now though. You could easily skip to the second.

[Bren]

Play the second, its such a nice lookin game, quite easy to play, its just a game you can relax on! I spent so many hours craftin me hero to perfection. Realllly love that game lol, iv got a completely perfect and completely evil character ready for the third, cant wait >

 

Also, its girlfriend friendly

 

Im happy they're going to make it true co-op, the last one was so dissapointin with co-op, 2 players crammed into a screen, camera would fuck up, always stoppin one player from goin too far away, REALLLY annoyin. I hope on this 2 players can just explore the world together over live and do anythin, go anywhere, not be restricted to stay with your other person.

 

Another thing i like the sound of is the dog, acting more like a dog, i wanna see it hunt down some rabbits n rip their guts out, which apparently it will... maybe not the guts tho

Edited February 13, 2010 by Bren

[Jimbob]

Shorty is right, you can miss out Fable and move right into the second title. I did this, but i did go back and play the first title. It was so dated, sluggish and all that.

 

The third title does look promising. Finally being able to rule the kingdom, hopefully with more choices to make. I am thankful that the co-op will be improved upon this time around.

[Nolan]

Meh.

 

I'll give this a miss I have little faith in Lionhead. The menu in Fable II lags, that's unforgivable.

[Dante]

New screenshots from GDC.

 

GDC: Designing Fable III - New details on the upcoming non-RPG.

 

As he traditionally does, Peter Molyneux, the father of Fable and creative lead for Microsoft Game Studios Europe, took the stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to give a lecture. This year the title of the talk was The Complex Challenges of Intuitive Design, a discussion on how to make games more immediately accessible to all everyone without "dumbing them down." Joining Molyneux in the talk was Peter Atkins, lead designer on Fable III.

 

Much of the talk felt like a repeat of the recent X10 demo, which you can read all about in our most recent preview. Now, however, Molyneux gave some context as to why Lionhead is making such drastic changes to an established franchise. He began by talking about the RPG genre as a whole, essentially writing it off as being too limiting. "The RPG market is limited by core gamers," Molyneux said. While Fable 1 sold about 3 million and Fable 2 sold 3.5 million copies, the goal for Fable III is to move into the upper echelon of hit games with sales of over 5 million. For that to happen, the franchise would have to target the larger action-adventure genre.

 

Molyneux outlined the thought process as a series of questions. "What if we moved Fable towards an action-adventure? What would that mean? What would we lose and what would we gain?" Provided the core elements of Fable still exists – listed as Morphing, choices with consequence, drama, emotion, and accessibility – would it really change the game that much?

 

Fable III is doubling down on these core elements, while removing many of the more traditionally "hardcore" elements. The combat has been streamlined, taking inspiration from studios like Team Ninja (of Ninja Gaiden fame) and Santa Monica Studios (known for God of War). The drama is being improved with a new "touch" system for interacting with non-player characters, drawing inspiration from Ico. The health bar has been done away with, inspired by what has become the standard in first-person shooters. Even the idea of leveling up and gaining experience is being overhauled.

 

"Surely, we had to keep experience. Experience for role-playing games is a massive thing. I began to realize that experience is all about combat, but the Fable world is much bigger than that." You don't get experience for getting married, or farting on someone, Molyneux noted. The replacement is a system of followers. The goal of Fable III is to first recruit an army and then overthrow a tyrant king. That's only the halfway point, however. From there, you'll have to rule a kingdom. "Everything you do, however trivial or noble or wonderful, results in you gaining or losing followers." Get married to the right person, you get more followers. Make a promise to a certain town that you'll tear down a polluting factory, and you'll win their trust. Of course, making certain judgments, as the system is called in Fable III, might have consequences.

 

Molyneux then teased that your followers might even be affected by things outside of the game. He noted that he currently has a lot of followers on Twitter and finds that very intriguing. Will Twitter be integrated into Fable III? Or will the number of people on your friend's list affect your followers? It's an intriguing concept, but we'll have to wait and see what this tease means.

 

The most interesting part of the talk came when Molyneux spoke about how Lionhead planned to simplify the user interface for more accessibility. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody that enjoyed the item management system in Fable II, and Molyneux agrees that it needed fixing. During the talk we got our first look at how Fable III is taking the majority of the 2D interface and placing it in the 3D world.

 

For something like changing clothes, you'll go into a wardrobe closet to view each costume you have (and a butler voiced by John Clease will help you out). With the touch of a button you can swap to a new look. Or, you can angle the camera down to simply change pants. The same goes for dying your clothes, allowing for the same amount of customization as you got in Fable II without all of the clutter.

 

We also got a look at the new map interface. There's a war room of sorts where you can walk up to a map table and peer down on it. This allows you to scroll around the top of a map and look at all of the areas. Using a magnifying glass, you can peer down into each area and town. The kicker is that the simulation of the town is still going on, so you can see all of the people walking around going about their business in a simplified 3D world. I even saw Molyneux zoom further in to a single house where he could see his in-game wife and kids, and interact with them. Molyneux teased that, though it wouldn't be similar to an RTS, this map could be used for sending troops around the world once you are king or queen.

 

Peter Atkins primarily spoke about the combat mechanics of Fable III. While he didn't divulge any new details, he did defend the difficulty of Fable II when he let everybody know that, though some cried out that the game was too easy, that was the intention. The goal, he noted, was to make the player feel powerful and not to use old-school arcade balancing curves. "Is Fable too easy? That's a tough thing to figure out…It really is built around feeling powerful…[it's]balance to create an emotional experience. We want you to feel powerful but we also want you to care."

 

During the question and answer session at the end, Molyneux declined to close off hopes of Fable III coming to PC. "I would love to see the Fable franchise on the PC," he said. However, he noted that it would have to be "awesome." He also refused to confirm a new version of the popular Fable Pub Games, though he did say that Lionhead likes the idea of importing and exporting data from games and that we should, "expect some surprises there."

[Bren]

I really cant wait for this lol, i thought Fable 2 was easy, but i enjoyed it so much, i loved being stronger than everyone, and makin my hero look like a king, the combat didnt bother me too much. The magic attacks gave me a feelin of power, when you got your 5star fire attack and it just fucked up everything around you, it was a beast.

 

Splinter cell, Halo and Fable... a good year for me

[Sheikah]

So basically it's going to go down a casual route to try and get more people to buy it. I didn't mind Fable II...it was really quite heavily slated when it was fairly enjoyable.